Flight and Fight: Flying things in /v/lancer
So, you just downloaded /v/lancer, you installed it, and you're ready to play the game. But wait. YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW THE FUCK TO PLAY IT. OH GOD WHAT IS THIS BUTTON WHY IS MUSIC PLAYING WHY AM I A SPACE TRUCKER HOW DO I MINE ZZZZZ RITE GUISE OH HOW I CHAT. Calm down, shut the fuck up, and follow this guide. Basic Flight First off, Freelancer isn't EVE, you are almost always in complete control of your little ship. Remember these basics to fly, and you probably won't die. Probably. Mouse does everything for you. Flight is mouse based, with some keys corresponding to special flight commands. Spacebar enables/disables freeflight, basically locking your ship so that it either heads towards where you told it to go to (More on that later) or just flies forward. In this "locked flight" clicking and dragging the mouse changes direction. In Freeflight (Again, press spacebar) merely moving the mouse changes direction. To target/select anything, merely click on the thing in space, or select it in your list (That thing in the bottom left corner.) The list shows different things, and you can click on any of the little buttons in the list to filter your target options. The buttons are: Exclamation point: Shows anything that is immediately important, enemies, mission objectives, etc. The ships filter to only show any ship, the base symbol anything dockable or anything big that isn't a ship (These are called Solars) and the weirdass infinity symbol shows everything. Now that you've targeted or selected something, you can either dock with it, rape it, fire at it, or go to it. To fire at something, merely click. Clicking fires any active weapons, which are displayed in the bottom right screen. Blue-white weapons are inactive, merely clicking turns them green, or active. This is a good way to conserve energy, turning off your weapons. F2 and F3 are the go-to and docking buttons, respectively. Select something then press F2 to head towards it, while in this mode, you will dodge most asteroids and slow down near large stations. Disabling freeflight makes the autopilot take over entirely, and it will head straight to the object, maneuvering around obstacles. Docking with something can only be done within 10k of it, any farther and it doesn't work. You can only dock on bases and tradelanes. The final two things you need to know are cruise and thrust, thrust is used mainly in combat, using it makes you go faster. Cruise is by default shift and W together, it's basically your warp engines, used to go places quickly. Combat: If you shoot them, they will die. Great, you can fly, you can dock, you can set things up. now comes the major thing, combat. You may think at first combat is fun and easy, but eventually you'll be going up against whole fleets, so you'll need to be good at things. For information on weapons, click here. Basic Combat Mechanics Alright look, you click on the thing, you shoot it, the blue bar is the shield, when that runs out, the red bar starts going down. When that goes down, the thing dies. You can then loot it with B, or click on a specific loot item to tractor just that in with Shift + B. Other ships will try to shoot at you, don't get hit. If you do get hit, use F and G to restore your shields or hull. More Advanced Combat Mechanics, for pros. Now the actual cool stuff. First off, dodging lasers, and knowing when to dodge them. Like every good AI, the NPCs in /v/lancer will ACTUALLY SAY WHEN THEY ARE GOING TO SHOOT YOU. If you hear this, the best tactics are either to target the dumbass who said it, look behind you and start shooting backwards or launch a mine (There's a key for that, it varies) or dive down quickly. In almost all combat situations, you will be using your thrusters, so keep your finger on the tab key. Of course, seeing as you're thrusting around like a retard, so will your opponents. Luckily for you, you can shoot individual pieces off of a ship. You see that little picture in your target box, that ship in brackets? That's the targeting thingy, clicking that allows you to target individual parts, and then when you shoot the ship, it will amazingly, SHOOT THOSE THINGS OFF. Use this to get rid of launchers, thrusters, anything, you can even make a ship a complete sitting duck, then let it die from radiation. The next topic is missiles, torpedoes, and all the stuff that goes boom. First off, two more keys to learn, X is reverse thrust, hitting this makes your ship back up, this can actually be used to execute tight turns, and if you strafe while doing this, you can turn even better. Z is engine kill, it makes you start drifting, but you retain your speed. Why is this useful? Well, if you kill engines while your cruise engines are on, you can go that same speed, but you can STILL FIRE WEAPONS. More than that, you can actually turn around in mid flight, still going at the same speed in the same direction, and fire behind you. The other thing brings us finally to missiles. Missile speed is determined between how fast you are moving, and the missile's thruster speed, that means when you charge into battle, you can cruise, cut your engines, then fire the missile, and it'll almost always hit with a resounding, very satisfying, crash. This semi-ramming tactic also works with torpedoes. Grandmaster's Legendary Flying Skills Semi-ramming missiling and cutting the engines not working for you? Need a repertoire of impossibly stylish and possibly effective manuevers to show off your internet superiority? This is the article for you! When it comes right down to it, freelancers place too much trust on firearms during combat. Ships like the Zoner Whale have no weapons whatsoever yet are game-breakingly effective in combat when in the right hands. The Zoners know what they're doing- they don't have time to buy weapons, they're too busy saving the universe. What some people seem to forget is that your ship is essentially a non-exploding torpedo, and should be used as such. When in doubt, activate your cruise engines and spiral towards the enemy/ally, instantly crippling their shields and sending them spiralling off course possibly into an asteroid to meet their demise. Its a great icebreaker for bros. During a boss battle, it's recommended to form up and cruise into their slow-ass battleships. With the momentum you're going at, theres no way you can lose, especially if you work together. The second legendary technique can be performed while cruising. Immediately shut your engines off, slam the mouse forwards, and hold down the fire button. If performed correctly it will appear as though you are shooting everywhere at once all while hurtling unstably though space. This is best performed in dark galaxies where you can't see where you're shooting so you might as well just fuck it and shoot everywhere.